UbiquiTouch: Self Sustaining Ubiquitous Touch Interfaces

Anandghan Waghmare, Qiuyue (Shirley) Xue, Dingtian Zhang, Yuhui Zhao, Shivan Mittal, Nivedita Arora, C. Byrne, Thad Starner, G. Abowd

PDF Video

Ubiquitouch, a system for interaction.

Abstract

We present UbiquiTouch, an ultra low power wireless touch interface. With an average power consumption of 30.91µW, UbiquiTouch can run on energy harvested from ambient light. It achieves this performance through low power touch sensing and passive communication to a nearby smartphone using ambient FM backscatter. This approach allows UbiquiTouch to be deployed in mobile situations both in indoor and outdoor locations, without the need for any additional infrastructure for operation. To demonstrate the potential of this technology, we evaluate it in several different and realistic scenarios. Finally, we address the future application space for this technology